Archive for the ‘labour’ Category

And so it goes on. I said yesterday that Brown come become the most embattled prime minister in recent history. With events moving so fast, I think he has become just that.

An opinion poll in the Telegraph tomorrow puts the Conservatives 11 points ahead of Labour – 43 to 32. Two months ago, Labour enjoyed the same lead. The Met will be feeling the collars of Gordon Brown and his entourage. Harriet Harman has failed to register loans she received to help fund her campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Peter Hain has admitted he has not declared £5000.

Iain Dale predicts Harman will be gone by Monday. I think he is right. If she has any honour, she will resign as Deputy Leader and resign as Leader of the House of Commons before she is pushed. She has so clearly broken the law. If a Tory had done that, I can just hear the condescending platitudes emanating from her. She will now have to swallow some harsh medicine. With worries that the economy it set for a downturn and Brown’s crisis management non-existent, Labour must now realise that their time in power is coming to an end; and it can’t come soon enough.

The past two and a half weeks have been the most politically volatile anyone can remember for a long time. The opinion polls are not to be trusted. They are jumping everywhere and yesterday we saw the first casualty of Brown’s ‘non-election.’

Now is a good time to pause and think. This is what the Lib Dems will have to do to make sure their new leader is the right one, and this will give them a problem.

When John Major became Foreign Secretary after the departure of Geoffrey Howe, the country said, ‘John who?’ He was in the cabinet, but the post of Chief Secretary to the Treasury is not a prominent job, but by the time he became Chancellor of the Exchequer a few months later he was a household political name. This gave him the springboard he needed to go for the leadership after Thatcher was pushed out.

Tony Blair was a leading light in the Labour Party long before he became leader. He had made quite a name for himself as Shadow Home Secretary. The electorate – at least those even with a passing interest in politics – knew who he was.

The same can also be said for Ming Campbell. We should not forget his performances in the House of Commons as Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesman. He has a fine grasp of world affairs and he made a name for himself before, during and after the invasion of Iraq.

When it comes to Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, the same cannot be said of them. They are known to people who are actively involved in politics; but not to the public at large. If you are not well known, you have to be a natural leader, good at getting your point of view across. You have to be able to command a stage. David Cameron wasn’t really known when he became leader of the Conservative Party, but he is proving himself to be strong, cool under fire and has built a very strong team around him who look and sound like ministers; not shadows.

The future of the Liberal Democrats relies on either Huhne or Clegg doing a Cameron. From what I have seen, I don’t think they have it in them. They are both ambitious – which is not a sin – but they don’t stand out from the crowd. For the first time in over ten years the government has real opposition from the Conservative Party. Gordon Brown is right to be worried. What goes through his mind when he looks at his ministers and how they perform, and then looks across at the opposition front bench? Brown has to shoulder the responsibility though.

If he had allowed his ministers more than a few minutes to speak at the party conference, instead of pouring all the attention on his very dull speech, one or two of them may have shone. He didn’t and they didn’t which gave George Osborne, Liam Fox, David Davis, et al, a head start. And they took advantage of this with devastating effect. It was a coming of age for many of the Conservative front bench team and the public can also see that David Cameron isn’t threatened by the talent he has around him; unlike Gordon Brown, who would rather be surrounded by ‘yes’ men. You can see this by his choice of Chancellor of the Exchequer and how he performed last week. We know who is in charge at the Treasury and his name isn’t Alistair Darling.

When all the dust settles and the Lib Dems have their new leader, we will see three party leaders who will lead their respective parties into a general election. David Cameron and his team are the strongest now and I can’t envisage that changing. Gordon Brown’s dithering has cost him dearly and judging by his body language of late, he knows it better than anyone.

They are the words of Matthew Parris, who is once again at his best in The Times today. I agree wholeheartedly with him. The Conservative Party has to go for the jugular now. It has to expose the New Labour myth and show the electorate what a weak prime minister we have. We have to expose Labour as the control freaks they are. We have to expose them as the PR men in expensive suits that they are.

The Conservatives have the initiative now. We cannot take our foot off the gas. To do so would mean us missing the best opportunity we have had to prove ourselves as a party of government since the general election of 1992.

A rattled looking Gordon Brown left the House of Commons today after a blistering attack by David Cameron and Conservative MPs. He is still trying to con us all into thinking he didn’t call an election because he puts his country first; not because the polls told him he couldn’t win. Alistair Darling is trying to lie by saying he hasn’t stolen Tory policies.

They and the rest of the government think they can get away with it. Pull the other one. New Labour. New lies.

A pollster stops you in the street and asks, “Who, in the past ten years, has done more for this country: The Queen or John Prescott?” I think I know your reply. If anyone can think of a single achievement of good old ‘two jags’ then please tell me. And the shame if it all is that he costs more than Her Majesty.

Click here and you can watch him outside the East Hull Labour HQ on Holderness Road. Notice how he never mentions anything he has done. Well if you can’t think of anything John, I can’t be bothered to do the research.

I am just watching Tony Blair’s departure from Trimdon Labour Club. If I had returned to Britain from a desert island and happened to watch these scenes and listen to Mr Blair’s speech, I would be excited. Britain must be a fantastic place to live in these days. Unfortunately, I have not been on that desert island and we all know the realities of the previous ten years.

What Labour forgets, as it dismisses the Thatcher years, is that if it was not for her, things far from being better, would be a hell of a lot worse. I am proud to be British and I know the people of these islands are special. It is where my heart it. So why are so many of our citizens escaping this country in their droves? Why do I know so many people who cannot face retirement in Britain and are moving to France? Britain is less British now than it was ten years ago. Our freedoms are being constantly eroded. Thousands of new offences on the statute book. The Home Office in an utter mess. Our young people being put in to crippling debt if they want a university education. The NHS in crisis. Nurses qualifying and then being told there isn’t a job for them. Junior doctor’s revolting in their masses.

This has been a sleazy, corrupt government. They have wasted every mandate they received and things will only get worse under Gordon Brown, not better.

John Reid told The Politics Show: “That is a natural break period because if I stay a year and leave then that will be misrepresented.“Now I’ve done nine jobs in 10 years and I think from my point of view I think it’s a good thing to be able to go out to listen, to learn, to discuss, to get back to the grass roots.“But also from the point of view of an incoming prime minister. I think the new prime minister should have the maximum flexibility. He needs space.”

Okay, I think now is time for the translation. What Mr Reid really said was this:“I don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of becoming prime minister, and I hate my Rt Hon ‘Friend’ with a passion. I would rather swim the Atlantic Ocean than serve in a Brown government.”

That sounds better, doesn’t it? It is so very important to clear these issues up.

No, I’m not talking about John Prescott’s personal life. This story in the Hull Daily Mail, is about property owners who are about to lose their homes through coastal erosion.

The government has a non-intervention policy when it comes to coastal erosion and therefore the council is not allowed to intervene. So, if you are someone whose home is about to fall in to the sea and of course lose your money in that property, what will the government do for you? Make you pay for its demolition! Yes that’s right, the government who will not allow councils to intervene and try to halt the erosion will make you pay to demolish your own home. And on top of that will not give you a penny in compensation. In East Yorkshire only a few properties are at risk during the next five years, so it hardly going to cost the Treasury a fortune.

This government’s answer to all problems is throw money at it. And if that doesn’t work, throw even more money at it, yet it cannot help people who are about to lose their homes in this way. Call me cynical, but if this was happening in Labour constituencies, do you think there may be a different response?

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